6.) Coupon Stockpile – Am I hoarding…

There is a fine line between building a reasonable stockpile of items that will help save your family money while providing you the security in knowing your covered in case of emergency as well as, God willing, provide you the ability to donate to local causes to help “pay it forward” and say…acquiring so many items that your family is terrified to bring people over to the house for fear that the toilet paper mountain will come crashing down causing serious injury to family and friends.

Seriously though…when it comes to starting and building a stockpile, set your expectations as well as your limits and stick with them. Understand the expiration dates on the foods that you are getting to store and make reasonable and logical decisions about whether you want to get them or not. Note that I’m not trying to discourage you from getting free items – by all means…but what I’m trying to do is make sure that you don’t get caught up in the “It’s free so I need 300 of them” only to realize that the items that you have will outlive your children’s children. That’s when you need to do an honest self-reality check and determine if you’re stockpiling or simply hoarding (or as I read somewhere, “organized hoarding”).

But that said, a stockpile is a couponer’s bragging rights…the ability to show off the depths of items and fully qualify them with how little they spent on them – it’s part of what it’s all about. Ironically, it wasn’t too long ago where people bragged how MUCH they spent on something. In today’s model, it’s the person that can say they picked up $800 worth of household products for $12 that raises eyebrows and gains notoriety, especially in today’s economy. Too, a stockpile allows the couponer the ability to dictate the price of something that they will buy instead of leaving it up to the store. If I wait until I’m out of deodorant before going to get some, I’m more apt to pay upwards of $4 a stick. HOWEVER….if a great sale comes up when I don’t need it, and I pick up say…ten of them for free, then the cost to my family is zero now, and savings of upwards of $4/stick and that then becomes pure profit.

Learn to organize your stockpile just as you would if you were organizing your regular pantry of items, and since you are going to have (most likely) more on hand than you would have had normally, it’s best to make sure you’re rotating your inventory to keep the ones more ready to expire in the front.